African Christianity Homepage
Christianity in Africa South of the Sahara
Roman Catholic Christianity
Kongo Christianity
Christianity in Africa South of the Sahara Homepage
Roman Catholic Missions 1450-1890
Kongo Christianity
Roman Catholic Missions 1890-1960
Roman Catholicism since Vatican II
Protestant Missions 1700-1890
Sierra Leone
Southern Africa
Xhosa
Interior Missions
Buganda
Mary Slessor
Protestant Missions 1890 - 1960
African Independent Churches
African/Ethiopian Churches
Aladura
Zionists
William Wade Harris & Harrists
Simon Kimbangu & Kimbanguists
Christianity among the Kongo people, who lived and still live in what is now northern Angola and much of coastal Congo, began with the visit of Diego Cam, a Portuguese explorer, in 1484. Cam invited several Kongolese to return to Portugual with him, and when he agreed to leave several Portuguese seamen behind to ensure that they were not being taken as slaves, they agreed. The following year the men returned, having learned Portuguese and the basic facts of Christianity. The Manikongo (ruler of the Kongo) was impressed with what they had learned and asked for missionaries to be sent to the Kongo. They arrived in 1491, and were well received with a significant number of Kongolese accepting the message of the gospel, with varying degrees of sincerety. Among them were the manicongo, his queen and their eldest son, Mbemba Nzinga. The conversion of the king and queen were short-lived, foundering on the stumbling block of European resistance to polygamy, but Mbemba NzingaÕs conversion seems to have been sincere and durable, surviving his banishment when his parents rejected Christianity.
Mbemba Nzinga won the throne in battle upon his fatherÕs death in 1506 and ruled until his own death in 1543. He remained a Christian all his life, taking on the throne name Afonso. Politically his devotion to Christianity and the new ways was aided by the fact that he had no traditional claim to the throne, though his Portuguese supporters assumed he was the heir. He was his fatherÕs eldest son by his principal wife, but the title passed matrilineally and his mother was not from the ruling clan. He could not become manicongo unless he abandoned the ancestral traditions, which were reinforced by the traditional religion.
AfonsoÕs commitment to the new ways included an interest in western medicine, education, and technology. At first he was willing to pay for the new imports with slaves, but then relented "our country is being completely depopulated and Your Highness should not agree with this nor accept it as in your service. And to avoid it we need from these [your] Kingdoms no more than some priests and a few people to each in schools, and no other goods except wine and flour for the holy sacrament." [quoted in Isichei African Christianity, p 64]
AfonsoÕs son Henrique entered the church, studying in Portugual for thirteen years, and returning to the Kongo as a bishop, through not of Kongo, but as titular bishop of Utica in Tunis, North Africa. The Portuguese clergy resented his authority and marginalized him, so he returned to Portugual in despair in 1529. It was not until 1970 that the Church appointed its second black bishop from West Central Africa.
The Portuguese clergy did more harm than good to the progress of Christianity among the Kongo. Many of them spent more time in trade than in teaching or preaching, and even more of them connived in or participated in the slave trade. Portuguese traders did the kingdom even more harm than the clergy did, supporting an uprising by Luso-African rebels, which led to the collapse of the kingdom of the Kongo in 1665.
After the collapse of the kingdom, the essentially Roman Catholic Christianity of the Kongo was transformed by the social pressures of war and deprivation. Several women prophets rose to prominence in the confused religious situation. Vita Kimpa, baptised as Beatrice had been a noblewoman and traditional priest. She claimed to be the medium of St Anthony, absorbing the idea of spirit possession from traditional religion. She destroyed both crucifixes and traditional religious talismans as powerless to save and taught that Jesus was black, born in the Kongo capital, now called San Salvador. Both nbles and the poor rallied around her against the rebel rulers and recaptured San Salvado. Her triumph, however, was short-lived. She was burnt at the stake in 1706 at the age of 20.
Letters from the King of Kongo to the Pope
This page was based on the following sources, which you can consult for more detailed information:
Elizabeth Isichei, A History of Christianity in Africa from Antiquity to the Present. London: SPCK, 1995. Around page 63-67
J. Thornton, ÔThe development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of the Kongo: 1491-1750Õ The Journal of African History 1984 pp 147-167
_____ The Kingdom of Kongo, Civil War and Transition 1641-1718, University of Wisconsin Press, 1983.
A. Hilton, The Kingdom of Kongo Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985)
R. Gray, Black Christians and White Missionaries, New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1990)
Sigbert Axelson, Culture Confrontation in the Lower Congo, Uppsala: Gunmessons, 1970) Studia Missionalia Upsaiensa XIV